


we crave a different kind of buzz

by catling



Series: Female!Oliver AU [2]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Genderswap, girl!Diggle, girl!Oliver
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-11
Updated: 2013-12-11
Packaged: 2018-01-04 08:11:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1078634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catling/pseuds/catling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joan Diggle is pretty sure she knows what she's getting into when she takes a job protecting Olivia Queen. This feeling does not last.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we crave a different kind of buzz

**Author's Note:**

> So, I'm kind of into this universe.

Joan Diggle had been a lot of things over the course of her life. She had been a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a soldier; for a very brief period of time, she had even been a wife. Until a few months ago, she had also thought of herself as a very well-paid babysitter for the woman she was currently watching storm out of the Foundry to go take out her anger on some white collar criminals. 

Her first impression of Olivia Queen had been second-hand. When a local heiress comes back from the dead after five years, it tends to make headlines. Joan hadn't really been that interested, though, until the kidnaping, and the subsequent call from Moira Queen. 

The articles she had glanced over before were gathered together and read carefully, because Joan was nothing if not professional, and knowing your client was half of protecting them. 

The press painted, if not an ugly picture, at the least an unflattering one. Queen had been your standard rich party girl, emphasis on the party. She had partied a little too hard, judging from the drunk and disorderly charges, dismissed thanks to a few well-timed donations from Queen Consolidated. There was also the charge pending at the time of her "death", the attack on a paparazzo who got a little too close with his camera. 

The most interesting thing about Olivia, at least on paper, was her death and resurrection. And the kidnaping. The kidnaping was interesting. Most likely a ransom attempt, but a bit quick on the trigger. The girl had only been home a day. At any rate, it had seemed an easy gig, and it was certainly lucrative, so Joan had agreed quickly. 

Joan's first live encounter with the returned heiress gave her the first inkling that there was something off about the whole thing. She was so calm. Strangely so. She had been attacked and kidnaped not twenty-four hours previously, but she seemed unruffled. 

Seemed would come to be the main word Joan applied to her new client. Olivia always seemed to be at ease, but that wasn't right, was it? Even a spoiled brat like the one described in the tabloids would be different after five years on a deserted island. And then there was the watchfulness. The girl was alert in a way that reminded Joan of soldiers after they'd spent time in a war zone. 

But if she was honest with herself, she had chalked it up to the culture shock. Going from being alone for so long to being around people had to be an adjustment. Still, Olivia had surprised her, and that was a rarity. She decided this case might not be so boring after all. 

The scars were the next piece of the puzzle. Olivia's friend, Merlyn, had thrown a party to celebrate her return. It was obnoxious, and loud, and Joan actually lost track of her charge for awhile there, but before the whole thing started, there had been the dress. 

Merlyn had been waiting downstairs with the younger sister, Thea, laughing and joking and then Olivia had come sailing down the stairs in spike heels like she'd never stopped wearing them, and Joan had allowed herself to be a bit impressed with that, since she had had a hell of a time adjusting to even a low heel after spending a tour in boots. She was wearing a tight gold dress that looked similar to a dozen others Joan had seen in the papers during her research. 

Long blond hair loose and makeup perfect, she looked like she was born to wear skimpy dresses and go to wild parties, except for the scars. The first one they saw, Joan and Merlyn and Thea, was the one on her shoulder, exposed where her dress dipped low. That one was soon forgotten, though, as she bounced down and moved past them all toward the door. 

Her back was--well, Olivia had surprised her again. Joan was mentally calculating the severity and healing times for each wound, at least the ones she could see, because these were not injuries that looked like those you would get by yourself on a deserted island, but she was aware enough to see the look on her companions' faces. Thea looked shocked and a little afraid, and Merlyn--Merlyn looked sick and then just sad. 

Olivia swiveled on her heel to see what the hold-up was and caught the expressions. Something flitted across her own face, and then she smiled, but it was just a little desperate around the edges. "What are we waiting for? I was told there was a party out there with my name on it."

Merlyn had rebounded first, guiding her out to the car with his hand on her back. Thea had come back a bit weaker, but managed to recover in time to arrive at the club. And Joan had just watched and wondered who it was she was supposed to be protecting. 

\-----

So it hadn't been exactly shocking when she'd woken up to Olivia in a hood, with green paint around her eyes and a bow and arrow propped up in the corner. And while she sometimes revisited her original stance that her client had simply went completely insane, she learns to live with the special brand of crazy that she brings. 

And with this and sundry other revelations, her perception shifts again. The party-girl becomes an enigma, the enigma becomes a whack-job, and the whack-job becomes a friend. 

But Olivia Queen is still a bundle of contradictions. Even after bringing Joan into her secret, she still doesn't want to bend much on her goals; namely, her father's list. Joan makes things clear, though. If they are going to be partners in this, she isn't going to follow Olivia's lead blindly. 

The main annoyance of working with her doesn't even turn out to be her stubborn determination to "right her father's wrongs". Joan is fine watching Olivia juggle her family and her friends, her reputation as a reckless party girl, her new business, which honestly doesn't take much effort once she pawns most of the work off on Merlyn, and her vigilante night-life, but she draws the line at being supportive when it comes to Laurence Lance. 

Joan had thought she and Lionel had had problems, but these two? They take the cake. Her personal opinion is that guilt is more of a motivating factor than love in Olivia returning to that well again and again, but she stays out of it, even if, as she not-so-subtly points out more than a few times, it doesn't exactly help their mission to have Detective Lance constantly looking for reasons to shoot both Olivia and the Hood. 

The girl can't seem to help attracting admirers, although it isn't as if she ever seems to be trying to help it. To be fair, though, the IT boy is pretty useful. 

Actually, if her theory that Olivia had deliberately told her blatant lies for weeks in some sort of weird attempt to test her was correct, Felix Smoak might be joining this crazy little crew any minute. 

Still, she thought, sighing as she pushed herself off the table to follow the Hood out the door, there could be worse things. She could have just been hired to protect a boring party-girl heiress.


End file.
